


pilate

by Askance



Series: Mashiach [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Stigmata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is fairly certain he’s the first person in history to use up an entire motel notepad by himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pilate

Dean is fairly certain he’s the first person in history to use up an entire motel notepad by himself. He’s become obsessed with cataloging—scratching out lists under the blue-and-white logo, tearing each one out when it’s finished and beginning again on the next blank page. Everything is happening too fast and the only way he can think of to make sense of any of it is to place each event neatly into a box, rationalise the passage of time, take deep breaths, smell the cheap ink on the cheap paper, gouge out words.

He is trying—though he can’t admit it to himself, not really—to make a comprehensive list of Sam. Four days ago, Cas woke him in the middle of the night, whispering that he needed help getting Sam back into bed from where he was slumped and bleeding in the bathroom. Somehow he’d managed to get in there while Dean was asleep, had pulled off his bandages and lost consciousness just as Cas had happened in, and Dean had been stricken with an awful gut terror at the sight of him: sitting against the bathtub in a widening pool of blood, breath shallow. Not dead—not yet. But, Dean knows, horribly close to it.

Since then he’s used up the entire complimentary notepad, pounding out numbers and bullet points with the constant hammering ferocity of a carpenter making a cross. It’s a distraction as much as anything else. Sam doesn’t wake up much anymore.

Cas sits quietly in the corner of the room most of the time, occasionally vanishing and reappearing with food he forces Dean to eat. Dean feels very small, almost childlike in his helplessness, as if Cas has suddenly taken on the role of a parent. If he’s honest, he’s grateful for the way Cas seems intent on taking care of him, of Sam. He doesn’t feel up to it anymore. He hasn’t felt capable of functioning in a good few weeks. The more Sam bleeds the more Dean feels himself going weaker, more dead, more numb. And after the deep soul-shocking scare of seeing Sam on the bathroom floor like a posed corpse in a crime scene Dean feels that the Earth is being swept out from under him, that the yawning abysses in Sam’s hands and feet are opening wider by the minute.

Every so often, whenever Cas touches him in comfort or concern, Dean becomes aware of how much he is trembling.

The lists, then. He keeps track of everything—when Sam wakes ( _twice today, once yesterday, four or five minutes on Monday, and he cried_ ); how Sam feels ( _weak, tired—at least the insomnia’s gone_ ); what Sam says (“ _hey, Dean.” “Sorry.” “I’m okay.” This morning, he said “ready,” and nothing else. I’m afraid of that_ ). He makes the affliction chronological, reads it backwards and forwards. He scribbles a diagram of Sam’s body and drills the holes into his hands and feet and head with such force that it breaks the paper.

Cas gently asks what he’s doing, huddled over the motel dinette with his pen in his cramping fingers, and Dean doesn’t know what to say to that. He thinks about the old myth that a person’s soul can be captured by the flash of a camera and wonders if maybe he’s trying to do that, somehow—desperately applying some far-flung superstition to his useless absent efforts on this notepad. If he can just get Sam down into an organised list—a neat catalogue—a solid, tangible truth—

When Sam does wake, it isn’t for long, and he’s in so much pain that he can hardly speak. Often he’s confused in a terrifying way that puts Dean in mind of those commercials one sees for Alzheimer’s medication, soft small elderly minds unaware of where they are or what is happening, and Dean can tell by the haziness of Sam’s eyes that he’s rarely fully awake, that everything is passing around him in dreamlike logic. In rare five-minute bursts of lucidity sometimes Sam seems to recognise Dean, at least, and apologises for scaring him in a voice so thin it’s barely a whisper. His face is a constant mask of pain, his fingers arthritically bent, too stiff to even fold in prayer when he has enough wherewithal to attempt it; Dean bathes and cleans his wounds and bandages them again whenever Sam is awake, and as soon as he is asleep again returns to his lists. What Sam ate today— _nothing._ What Sam said today— _sorry. Hey, Dean. Okay. Please._

Days pass in nightmarish stupor, blurred and elongated, uselessly snaring on the loops of Dean’s handwriting and drifting away just as easily. Dean isn’t sure when the sun rises or sets, how long nights stretch. For a few nights he tried to sleep in his own bed, but felt the itch of Castiel’s guardian gaze and the deeper itch of Sam’s body so achingly far away across the nightstand aisle, and gave up—he crawled into bed next to Sam instead, gathering the bundle of his brother’s bones into his arms and resting Sam’s weary head on his chest. Sam grows colder every day, and never so much as at night, and the beat of his heart is feeble and sad against Dean’s hand, and Dean can fit his fingers into the gaps between Sam’s ribs as easily as if those spaces were carved out specifically for him. It’s the only way he sleeps now.

“So what is this?” he asks Cas, hoarsely, the Wednesday after Sam’s passion on the motel tile. “What part of the story is this?”

“All that’s left is—” the angel begins, but then he stops, because he doesn’t need to say it. Dean already knows. It’s a hollow sort of surety in the back of his skull: that two weeks from now, at most, the world will not have Sam in it.

There isn’t a way to come to terms with that, so Dean returns to the dwindling notepad. He composes a list of everything about Sam that makes tears come to his eyes and that insane unfathomable love swell in his heart, and stops halfway through when he realises that there aren’t enough pages left on the cardboard backing to contain them all. _His smile_ is the last thing he writes on that particular list, and as he rips it out to crumple it into a ball he thinks, _I can’t remember the last time he really smiled._

* * *

 

In the end, it comes on much more quickly than Dean could have anticipated. On Thursday afternoon Dean is cataloguing on the cardboard backing of the notepad, the last remnant of it, writing down numbers in an endless stream—dates that mean something about Sam, ages, his LSAT score, that awful _four_ for the nail holes in his body—when Sam wakes up and says his name.

He abandons the dinette table and goes to him, leaning down by his bedside. Sam’s eyes are clear but unfocused, and he seems unable to rest them on anything for too long, but he reaches up with a stiff bandaged hand and Dean takes it, gently, in his own.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says, worry a lump against his Adam’s apple.

Sam’s lips turn up just a little bit—not a real smile, but an attempt—and he closes his eyes again as if keeping them open is painful. “You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Dean lies. Sam’s lucidity is bound to pass quickly, so he says, “How are you feeling?”

A muscle twitches in Sam’s arm and it jerks his hand in Dean’s. “Hurts,” he says, and swallows thickly.

Dean sits down on the mattress and strokes Sam’s hair out of his face. Sam nudges his cheek up into Dean’s touch and sighs.

“Think you could stomach a painkiller or two?”

“I don’t want. Mm. No.”

Sam sounds scarily far-gone, as if he is speaking from a great distance, as if the effort of bringing words up from his throat is too much.

“Okay,” Dean says. “Okay.”

“Cas?” Sam asks. His eyelids are sallow and pricked out with blue veins, so paper-thin now that Dean can see, sickeningly, the dark circles of his irises and pupils behind them, rolling slowly in their sockets.

“Left for a minute,” Dean murmurs. “He’ll be back.”

Sam breathes through his nose and his chest rises and falls. Under the covers he isn’t wearing much besides his underwear and bandages, and the dim shadows of the room cut across his ravaged chest, piercing out one dark nipple and the heavy crevasses of his ribs like some angrily-chiselled sculpture. The tattoo above his heart looks so much blacker on his skin than it used to. It hurts to look at him like this—Dean’s been watching Sam’s broad shoulders and lean muscles thin out all this time, and when he compares this emaciated shade of his brother in the bed to the last healthy image of Sam in his brain, the difference is horrifying. Like the before-and-after photos of a starving dog. He is gripped suddenly with an urge to pull Sam into his lap and hold him, a warmer Pietà, and simply never let go until Toth’s hammer or God’s yanking hand wrench Sam from his arms.

Sam surprises him by suddenly stirring, and beginning to sit up.

“Sammy?”

Sam squints and shakes his head a little, and then opens his eyes. “I want to—” He gestures without much strength towards the wall opposite his bed, where the crucifix hangs, keeping vigil. “Pray. Over there.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Dean says, putting a gentle hand on Sam’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of the whip-stripes that fester hot and red under his flesh. Sam pushes against him until he’s sitting up completely, bowed down over himself. “Sam. You need to stay in bed.”

“Please.” Sam turns his head to Dean and the light catches softly on the dried tear-tracks that have been forming to the sides of his eyes for the last week, taut skin where he’s wept in his sleep. Dean feels something twist in his stomach. Sam’s heart is feeble and straining under his touch.

“You can’t walk over there,” he says, knowing it’s not a real excuse, knowing he could lift Sam like a tiny child and carry him across the room if he had to, if he needs to.

“Just one more time,” Sam says. His voice is like the receding hush of ocean surf. “Please. Help me? Help me walk?”

“Sammy,” Dean says, feeling as if he is going to burst into a million pieces, “please.”

But he puts his arm behind his brother, letting Sam lean back into its curve and gripping his side with his hand—fitting his fingers into Sam’s ribs, awfully—and guiding Sam sideways, his legs dragging across the sheets. Sam whimpers in pain as his feet slip out from under the covers and whimpers again when they come to rest on the floor. His toes and arches and heels are so convoluted from bandages and bleeding that they cannot lie flat anymore.

Slowly, Dean lifts Sam’s slight weight, shouldering it all against him, until Sam’s legs straighten and he is more or less standing. Sam bites into his lower lip and his eyes are closed again, as if the light hurts them.

Dean waits until Sam has caught his breath, lost with the effort of getting up, and waits for him to attempt a shaky step forward.

It takes them twenty minutes to cross four feet of motel room. Sam bends double with pain and tears squeeze out and down his face, rolling big and wet down the gaunt cut of his cheekbones, and Dean turns his head to press his lips to Sam’s jaw—in encouragement, or sorrow, or fear, he isn’t sure.

When they finally reach the opposite wall, under the gaze of the crucifix, it takes all of Dean’s strength to keep Sam from collapsing onto the floor. He crouches, and Sam’s feet slide limply out from under him, and somehow Dean manages to lower Sam to his knees without dropping him sideways. The pressure of his own weight and the hard motel carpet against the wounds in his feet make Sam’s face contort, but he keeps quiet, sighs heavily once he’s on his knees, and his arm goes limp around Dean’s neck.

They kneel there for a long time, Dean propping his brother up like a mannequin, and Dean watches the light in the room drag across Sam’s face and body, catch in the deep sharp hollow of his collarbone and the wetness on his face. Finally Sam manages the strength to lift his hands and press them clumsily together, fingers too stiff to fold between each other, and he looks up at the crucifix, breathing hard. As if even his faith is weighing on him.

He moves his lips soundlessly and Dean doesn’t bother trying to decode the words. He watches, holds—sees Sam’s eyes drift across the crucifix above them and remembers the list he made of everything about Sam that sticks. His eyes had been on that list. The pale red flush that takes hold of Sam’s face when he cries had been on that list. The warmth that seems to come from somewhere deep in Sam’s chest had been on that list. All of that is still here, being held upright by Dean’s body and not much else—but it’s dim now, it’s dying; Dean is suddenly terribly aware that Sam is a candle flame and that he is guttering with every passing second.

What had he been thinking? Sam can’t be held captive in lists or catalogues. Sam doesn’t belong to him anymore. Sam’s eyes and his tears and his warmth belong to God, and Heaven’s coming to take what it owns, and Dean—for the first time in his entire life—is absolutely incapable of fighting back.

His heart seems to drop out of his chest. Feeling that it’s the only thing that will keep him from dissolving into sobs right then and there, he buries his face in Sam’s bony shoulder, smelling the sweat-and-soap scent of his brother’s skin, and bites down hard on his tongue. He can feel Sam’s breath moving harshly through his throat, and he can just barely hear the words of Sam’s prayer, whatever it is. It brushes past his ears with the brevity of a kiss until he manages to cull a few syllables together.

“Please,” Sam is whispering. His tears are hot and drops of blood are falling from his face as if to baptise Dean. “I’m ready. Please take me. Please let me die—”

At that, Dean starts, and lifts his head. Sam’s eyes are closed and his head has fallen back, and his entire body is shaking, and his face is the face of someone in the deepest throes of misery—crumpled like a piece of notepad paper, ugly with tears and blood from his brow, everything in him rattling through his throat.

“Sammy?” Dean says, feeling a jolt of terror, and Sam lets out a ragged noise that is something like a sob—and abruptly he goes still, and his hands come apart.

There is a beat of quiet and then Sam’s face—opens, in a way Dean has never seen—his lips and eyelids part and his entire body seems to lose its stiffness, and suddenly he is limp in Dean’s arms, a shudder shaking through all of him, and the light in the room glints off his hazel eyes as if they are made of glass.

“ _Sammy?_ ” Dean says again, feeling frantic and stupid and afraid, unsure what’s happening—it looks like a seizure, but somehow he thinks it’s something worse—and, scared to his bones, he acts on impulse, leans down to scoop Sam’s legs into his arms, and picks him up. There is a wingbeat behind him and he knows Cas has come back, and he feels two sudden hands on his shoulders guiding him back to the bed, and then Castiel’s arms are coming around him to help lower Sam back onto the coverlet where he goes limp, trembling as if from cold, eyes staring unseeing at some point on the ceiling.

“What’s going on?” Dean demands, glancing at Cas for only a moment before looking back at Sam. Dean touches his own face with bloodied hands, feeling the hot slick of tears, and he grips his head, trying his hardest not to come undone. “What’s going on?”

Cas doesn’t answer. Again, he doesn’t have to. He’s busy rearranging Sam’s doll-like limbs on the bed, trying to make him as comfortable as possible, while Dean stands uselessly by with a scarlet-streaked face and childish fear knocking in his mouth. He stares, helpless.

Cas gently pushes Sam’s body a little across the bed, and when he pulls his hand away from the far side of Sam’s stomach, his palm comes away bloody.

Time seems to freeze.

Cas stares down at the bright red on his fingers, and then stares at the growing claret stain on the sheets at Sam’s side, and he looks at Dean with such sorrow on his face that Dean wants to die, wants to lie down and stop breathing and die.

“Dean,” Cas says, and Dean turns around and walks away.

He walks into the bathroom where the grout is still a little metallic from Sam’s blood. He goes to the sink, to the mirror above the sink, and turns the knobs of the faucet with shaking hands. Hot water spurts out of the tap, splashing up the white porcelain bowl, and Dean puts his hands under its stream, watching it push away the blood, watching the water turn pink and circle around the drain. He pumps soap into his palms, turns the foam pink as well. When his hands are clean he finds that there is blood dried black and hard under his fingernails and digs into it, carving it out in little dark curls, digging so hard that he breaks the skin and his own blood mingles with Sam’s and he braces his arms against the sink and bows his head and sobs and sobs and sobs.

**Author's Note:**

> This series belongs in part to Casey, whose contributions can be read [here](http://whiskyandoldspice.tumblr.com/fanfiction). 
> 
> Pontius Pilate, by washing his hands of Jesus' case, allowed him to be crucified by his own people.


End file.
